The business secretary, Vince Cable, has promised to investigate the worldwide trade in offshore sham company directors following the disclosures of widespread abuses in a major joint journalistic project by the Guardian, BBC Panorama and a US non-profit group.

In a statement, Cable said he would review the nominee director industry, and possible abuses that were taking place, before Monday's undercover Panorama, and the continuing publication of Offshore Secrets, the Guardian's week-long exposure of the identities of offshore owners, which is being carried out in concert with the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

Cable said: "We are not complacent or naive. We recognise that there are individuals who will seek to abuse or evade" the regulations.

He would carefully consider the evidence being brought to light, and would review the so-called nominee director trade, he said. "I can assure you that we will investigate fully any specific allegations and ensure that appropriate action is taken … If we identify a need for further action as a result of that review, we will not be afraid to take it."

Officials in the Lib Dem minister's department have failed for more than a decade to curb the booming sham director industry, which is largely led by a small group of expatriate Britons, and opens the way to tax avoidance and concealment of assets. His business department has also allowed the anonymous purchasers of offshore companies, particularly those registered in the British Virgin Islands, to take over an increasing number of UK properties while hiding their true identities.

The Guardian investigation into Britain's role in the sham director trade has identified more than 21,000 companies, spread across the world in different jurisdictions, whose directors are pretending to control companies which are secretly owned by other people, such as Russian oligarchs and property speculators. The British sham directors, many originally from the Channel island of Sark, are based in remote places, including Nevis, Vanuatu, Mauritius, Cyprus and Dubai. They sell their signatures on official company documents, sometimes thousands of times.

Cable said that if nominees did not even know they had been appointed as directors of a company, a criminal offence of making false statements could have been committed. "My department has also disqualified a number of individuals who have accepted directorships in return for a nominal fee or commission from someone unknown to them."

But he added: "I am, however, conscious of the need to avoid additional burdens being placed on the vast majority of companies and directors who do comply with the law. We are therefore focusing our attention on those who deliberately seek to contravene it."